First, an apology on behalf
of my field. As you will know, Chinese is written in characters. The pronunciation
of each
character can be roughly represented in our alphabet, but there are two systems of romanisation in
common use in the
academic literature. (This does not include a small minority of works
that
employ less common systems, or the bastardised romanisation used in the
media,
or the more or less mangled romanisations of their own names by Chinese
authors!)
The system found in older works (and occasionally in new writing) is Wade-Giles.
The second system is pinyin, which is
the official
romanisation used by the People's Republic of China. You will find
pinyin used
in most recent books; even the Americans switched a few years ago,
perhaps because this
system is no longer considered politically incorrect in Taiwan

So you will find both Wade-Giles and pinyin in different
readings for this module. I will
give you a sheet that converts between the two systems, and I aim to
provide names in both forms, but you will need to be on the ball so
that you spot when you're reading about the same person in a different
romanisation. In your own writing, you should make every
effort to use one system consistently,
which will mean
converting anything you take from readings that use the other romanisation. I don't care
which system you use, but
the chief advantage of pinyin is that it dispenses with the endless and
confusing apostrophes of Wade-Giles, and that does make things easier
if you
don't happen to know Chinese pronunciation.

And now, to some suggested reading to
supplement the
lectures. No, I don’t expect you to read everything here all
by yourself, although if you share it around a work-group you should
manage it all easily. Note also that workshop readings/references will
be provided to you on handouts in advance of each workshop class.

Dull, Jack, 'Marriage and divorce in Han China: a glimpse
at "pre-Confucian" society', Chinese family law and social
change in historical
and comparative perspective, ed. David C.
Buxbaum (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978).